Why are we not talking about it? 13th December 2021.
Monday afternoon - quarter of an hour before my appointment.
In my bag there is the Samhain recording
The missing information
that I would have handed over last week
I mean everything seems positive?
Am I being hard on myself?
I mean in some ways this is a great adventure
Why do my insides feel as if they are made of water?
I'm beginning to unravel.
And this has certainly been an adventure, and it's been a year.
A whole year!
And really -------------- had such an effect.
Everything made sense,
all the impressions, visions, the feelings.
I don't wish to sound all P K Dick and the pink light
but there was something of this, in my experience.
I think this is crazy.
I just don't know.
Part of me doesn't trust these feelings.
And yet - what else is there to be done?
Of course I should trust these feelings.
I get out of the car and walk down the road to knock on his door...
--
There is silence in his room. Just the sound of him moving about in the kitchen behind the closed door to my right. The sound of the spoon stirring the coffee. I shift uneasily on the sofa, trying to find some way to sit that feels OK.
He - "Are you warm enough"?
Me - "Are you?"
He tells me that he is fine, but he knows that it gets colder for some other people, before he needs to have the heating on. And then as we talk I'm saying that I recognize people by how they move more than specific facial details -as I refuse to wear my glasses (unless I'm driving that is!)
He says: "Like frogs"!
That word frog (or did he mean a toad?) was deafening. A full force Jesus and Mary Chain feedback resonance loop.
I remember that on his website he had written about the symbol of the toad, as a symbol of lust. And his anecdote about the toad on his door step sounded to me like an Emergent numinous phenomenon - this is when something in the real world crystallises a thought or feeling, there is a hyper-significance to the experience. It feels more important than simply unexpected and random. And it seemed to me that the world was giving him a heads-up. But more significant for me here and now, this is the second time he has told me about the toad. No matter how much I repeated to myself - frogs aren't toads - there is resonance. I feel that he's just called me a frog.
This is not good.
The resonance is confirmed when he goes on to tell me his toad story again.
How he did not let the toad in...
Much laughing from both of us!
Because I don't see any option!
No point crying, I'm going to stay in his reality...
I ask about how he would teach someone as resistant as me about TA?
His reply is, why would I bother! That he couldn't think of a single reason why to even begin to try! Oh yes, I am the impossible to please frog-toad, sat on his sofa - the daemon temptress, Queen of impossible tasks,
I feel that there is a sub-text I can't read. Perhaps he doesn't think I mean what I say - and this is presented as I'm not psychologically ready for the mystery of TA (!) or that perhaps I'm playing a game of some sort? I'm assuming that actually this is about the toad in the room.
He is telling me that I don't want what I say I want. And uses a phrase I will grow to loath and detest...That looks like it wasn't the answer you were looking for" There is something about that statement: That looks like it wasn't the answer you were looking for" I can't shake the sensation that I'm hearing something else. I'm remembering how much he had wanted to give me that cartoon, so he felt that the message in it was significant. Specifically it was significant for me to see it. He had meant to print it out for me!
So - that's not the answer you were looking for, means what?
If it is similar to the cartoon message then, he must feel that he has stopped the game of me telling him 'no, not there, not there?' Underlying message, 'here let me help you unpack...but everything I do or say you see as wrong'! Why don't you see that I just want to help you?!
The myth of the never satisfied woman...
But I feel as if I've stepped into something bigger.
That something again.
It takes a while but we swim to higher ground...There is an art to preventing dialogues crashing. Something about agreeing on a subtle level with the role I've been put in, until I feel synchrony again?
And then I'm talking about how I had to go to Freud's house
He -"Had too?"
Me - "No, or maybe yes actually!"
When I was there Herr Freud become human for me; it was touching to see his glasses and his personal belongings - and to think of Jung visiting, too. Despite the speech about not being a Hercules, he is telling me much about TA, too much. My request had been how would you teach, rather than a request to be taught!.
He asks me if this gets me anywhere near getting me to understand what I wanted to understand?
Me - "Well I don't even know what I do want to understand - the question was, how would you give me TA?"
I'm now daring to ask for a conversation about us...But it is clear that when I think I'm challenging theory, he feels dismissed, misunderstood, misheard? That is my interpretation of his reply; tone of voice and the content, both are defensive. And that is pretty much how I feel when he misunderstands me - so this is my countertransference?
So countertransference? I'm feeling his feelings, because he doesn't acknowledge them?
I think so, because I'm used to talking about things that are way out of my depth, with people who know more than me. I discovered that I prefer gaining knowledge to feeling acceptance, and that really the only way to be truly accepted for who I am is to be vulnerable. To dare to ask the questions from my place of ignorance.
Later on I inadvertently step into a nightmare of him dismissing SFBT, his crystal clear laser logic is targeted on an imaginary enemy. Which proceeds until I find myself mindlessly repeating something he has said.
Me - "A person's come to talk about it but they really can't because they feel really nervous, and they feel that if they say the words then...bad things will happen"
This isn't about a client is it. Nor is it about how to react when your car breaks down. He feels that I will rip him apart. And I know that he will do that to me. So we are both as mad as each other!
But I am trying to get through the fear, I am doing something about it!
Right now I have the voice recording that describes my feelings for him in my bag, by my side! Now - right now.
The problem isn't that I think of him as being like my gaslighting husband, the problem is that he has similar traits. It isn't the wound that is the problem, it is the defence and denial, the refusal to be honest. The power dynamic here is creating a real problem...As I sit before him thinking ' don't you know how much I long to talk to you openly, behind all this...beyond all the rules, with honesty...and I will make that happen!'
He is talking once more about clients who are here for a reason that they cannot voice...
I paraphrase, but it isn't about his imaginary scenario! - "Why are we not talking about it"
That is a pretty clear statement - which I say as an echo, a reflection across a mirror impenetrable, it leaves ripples in the air as it widens and seeps through the walls...through the void...Because I don't think I'm the problem. I think I could talk about it if I felt that he'd take me seriously.
He tells me about the Child who has to be heard...but I don't honestly think my feelings about him are anything to do with my inner Child! I feel very adult feelings!
But I'm also feeling talked down to again. I am a mother, years before I'd worked in a children's hospital with parents and their children. And I didn't think of any of them as Child, only as people facing the unbearable - and I tried to match my emotions with theirs, to be as compassionate as I could be. So this notion of needing to recognize the Child, as if it is somehow difficult, isn't sitting well with me.
I feel 'talked down to'
Because I have felt obliged to placate his Child so many times in so many sessions with him. I think I'm good at it too!
But when I've tried to be Adult with him, that doesn't go well. I take from Gestalt therapy the importance of noticing and addressing ruptures, feeling when there is something glitchy in the relationship. Or of course noticing any kind of falling out! And right from the start of my sessions with Kit there were three glitches that led each time to tiny ruptures, big enough for me to notice and important enough for me to 'bring into session'. So I listed them, I described them and I expected us to talk about them, because I'd been taught that this is what happens in therapy!
We didn't talk.
He apologized, 'if that's happening I'm sorry'.
"If"
If it happened?
You mean perhaps it isn't happening?
Hmm...I'd thought that describing what happened as a mystery for both of us, was an invite to explore, but just the hint that there could be something glitchy actually hurt his feelings.
His response was defence?
My question then as now - Why are we not talking about it..
Anyway - I then go on to describe that 'we' non-TA people hear the TA words as they sound, whilst he hears them as they are meant; I separate the words Berne used, from any psychological appraisal of Berne. It is very tempting to look at the words people use and conjecture about the world they draw from, and extrapolate that into their view of people.
For Berne.
For Kit...
That in our sessions he tells me about responding to the Child in the adult who had horrible parents, over and over, so what am I supposed to be hearing, because I know what I'm hearing.
But none of this matters.
I have tried to get to honesty with him, he can't do it and nor can I! And I'm 'staying on the surface' whilst at the same time highlighting how the construction of meaning takes place. Whilst speaking to Kit as an 'insider / expert'. As I do this I can hear the metaphorical key turning in the metaphorical lock, because I'm bridging the gap for him. I'm using therapy skills.
Because I want him to admire me?
To trust me?
To hear that I get it, I get him.
I don't want him to see that I see the things I'm not meant to see.
Is that aspect of me the problem - for him?
My nickname at school was Jessica - as in Dune.
Step back..
The question remains:
Why are we not talking about it?
What am I doing?
I am enacting Jessica, acting as a catalyst for his understanding, whilst at the same time I believe that he sees me as the Frog Queen; a demanding presence who is never happy with what he gives me? I'm doing my best to change his horrible view of who I am. But I have no idea how he sees me.
Mr Kohut pray tell, who do you think I am to this therapist?
But why are we not talking about it!
I hear that he wants me to really hear his passion. And he is right - I side step it each time. I don't let myself resonate with it. Because passion is tricky, I'm 'in love with him' I need to give and receive and then give some more! But it has to be whole, all of it.
This alternative love in the here and now is supposed to be a milky-love, given without want or need.
I'm supposed to just open like a flower - metaphorically!
I've known more than a couple of men who have seen this as the highest and most noblest form of love; pure and eternal, in binary opposition to an equally imaginary 'love' imaged as demanding and brutish. I reject and accept the existence of both, and more, the word I'd use for what I want is real - real joy, real comedy, fascination, dreams and promise - add deep trust!
Anyway, in the light of these thoughts, it makes sense that are we not talking about it!
And yes he's telling me again about being the kindly parent, and being who the client needs him to be, responding with understanding of their needs...
And then he says - "And we have run over, because I just didn't want to stop - so interesting, and I'm so grateful for what you said about language because I really wouldn't have known hadn't you told me."
Is that right? Call me Jessica....
And I'm handing over the envelope that contains the letter and the recording. I'm saying 'I can't believe that I've just done that'. Fumbling for the doors... Can't open them. I'm walking away...And I'm not going to see him until the 3rd of January.
I'm gone.
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